The House of the Seven Gables (Chapter 5, page 1 of 16)

Phoebe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber thatlooked down on the garden of the old house. It fronted towards theeast, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light cameflooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling andpaper-hangings in its own hue. There were curtains to Phoebe's bed; adark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had beenrich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over thegirl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhereit was beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stoleinto the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.Finding the new guest there,--with a bloom on her cheeks like themorning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, aswhen an early breeze moves the foliage,--the dawn kissed her brow. Itwas the caress which a dewy maiden--such as the Dawn is,immortally--gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse ofirresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time nowto unclose her eyes.

At the touch of those lips of light, Phoebe quietly awoke, and, for amoment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtainschanced to be festooned around her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutelyplain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatevermight happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say herprayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect ofthe chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; oneof which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if someold-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and hadvanished only just in season to escape discovery.